I think I’ve died and woken in an alternate universe…where I agree with Bryan Gould

by Cameron Slater on June 27, 2016 at 8:30am

Bryan Gould is a cloth-cap socialist and failed politician.

It is safe to say he is a Euro-skeptic, after opposing the Maastricht Treaty and finally resigning as an MP in protest against Labour’s support for the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. The EU result, where 52% of the voting public rejected staying in the EU, will be the first time that Bryan Gould has been on a winning side for some time.

Among the many hysterical reactions to the Brexit decision, a particular post on Facebook caught my attention. The author was convinced that the decision to leave was the equivalent of the Visigoths’ sacking of Rome; civilisation itself was apparently in its last days.

It did not seem to occur to him that the decision to leave the EU was the product of a vote in which a majority of his fellow-citizens had simply, as part of their democratic right, acted on a view, or views, on a subject of interest to the whole community, that were just as valid as, but different from, his own. The barbarians whom he castigated were not invaders from elsewhere; they were Britons like him, enjoying the same right as he had to consider the issues and express a view. It is what is called democracy.

The fury and hatred aroused by the discovery that there was actually a majority that disagreed with those who thought that they alone were capable of reaching the right and proper decision – and the vitriol with which those sentiments are expressed – provides us with an insight into the mentality of many of those who simply could not believe that any view other than theirs was possible.

It has been utterly astonishing to watch people react to finding out that likes on Facebook are not votes, and signatures on an online petition are meaningless. Votes are what matter and the very people claiming democracy was stolen probably didn’t bother to vote. Older people do and that’s why the result delivered what they want.

For them, whether to remain or leave had ceased to be a practical issue to be calmly and rationally assessed. It had passed beyond the bounds of rationality and was approached with all the zealotry of the religious fanatic. “Europe” had become a symbol of who they were or wished to be – making common cause with all those of similar sensibilities across the continent.

The fact that the European Union was not “Europe” but simply a particular arrangement that – in some views and on some criteria – impacted adversely on the practical everyday lives of millions of their fellow-citizens was simply not a factor worth acknowledging, let alone considering. Many of those fellow-citizens, when they looked at the EU, did not see an embodiment of the glories of European civilisation, but an economic and political regime that served the interests of big international business rather than their own.

The zealots apparently believed that a judgment based on perceived experience should and could not stand in the face of their own more lofty convictions. Little wonder, then, given their lack of concern for democratic opinion, that they were equally undisturbed by the fact that the “Europe” they espoused provided an essentially undemocratic form of government imposed by unelected and unaccountable European bureaucrats on those who had never been asked in more than 40 years to agree to its growing pretensions.

The conviction that there was a kind of objective truth about the EU which could not be gainsaid led to a further error by the custodians of that supposed truth. For them, the referendum would be won if the less enlightened could be led to the truth. So, an endless procession of serious figures – the grandees whose views had always prevailed – were wheeled out to ensure that people were in no doubt as to how they should vote. What they did not seem to realise was that, the more insistent their supposed betters were, the more likely ordinary people were to disregard what they were told.

This problem exists everywhere. Fortunately, we have a mechanism for disabusing ignorant politicians of their wayward manner…it’s called the ballot box, and, for some, rapid and humiliating job loss.

It is becoming clear that many Labour voters – almost certainly a majority – voted to leave. It is true that Corbyn, partly perhaps because his heart wasn’t in it and partly in an attempt to placate his critics, found himself caught in a sort of no-man’s land. As a consequence, the Labour leadership missed the chance to place itself at the head of that majority who were fed up with the obvious, serious and growing deficiencies of the EU as a model for European integration. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn – through timidity rather than conviction – placed himself on the losing side and missed the chance to exploit the unavoidable blow to the authority of the Tory government that the Brexit decision represents.

He took refuge in urging Labour supporters to vote remain on the surprising ground that there were provisions, particularly concerning workers’ rights, that could not be changed by an elected British government. How odd that Labour should endorse the concept of government by an unelected European bureaucracy! How much more constructive and politically astute if he had faithfully represented the views of Labour voters as a step towards a democratically elected Labour government that would be the best protector of workers’ rights.

And how ironic that Corbyn’s opponents are now using the failure of their own analysis and strategy, and their own arrogant assumption that it was the voters’ duty to come to them rather than the other way round, to attack him. Among the many insights the Brexit decision provides is a spotlight on how far detached most of Labour’s parliamentary leaders are from the voters they claim as their own.

Jeremy Corbyn is a political retard, and the EU experiment for the UK is over.

Can Labour learn from this? Possibly, but first they have to save their party from the extremists in control and then they can try to think about rebuilding it. I suspect, though, that it is wrecked beyond belief.

– Bryan Gould

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.